Neekshttps://www.neeks.co.uk
Web Design & Development
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1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.1.2New Release: www.FarnhamKarate.org.ukhttps://www.neeks.co.uk/2017/05/12/new-release-www-farnhamkarate-org-uk/
Fri, 12 May 2017 21:38:10 +0000http://www.neeks.co.uk/?p=252We are very pleased to announce the release of a new website for one of the first ever karate clubs in the area.

Teaching traditional karate Wado Kai, the Farnham Karate Club is a very successful club run by Sensei Barry Wilkinson, 8th Dan Black Belt and vice-president of the Federation of Wado Kai Europe (FWE).

]]>Laravel 5 – Actions on user login.https://www.neeks.co.uk/2015/08/12/laravel-5-actions-on-user-login/
Wed, 12 Aug 2015 22:42:00 +0000http://www.neeks.co.uk/?p=206We are very new to Laravel and we’ve never used it before. So we were lucky to have started from fresh on Laravel 5.0

Previously, we have had some CodeIgniter projects, and most recently CakePHP 2.3.

We find Laravel more intuitive and better documented. Having said that CakePHP 3 has just been released with a new set of documentation.

As with all things, most of the time, there are many ways to achieve the same result.

So here is ours,

We have a basic web app where users register and have different roles assigned to them. So for the navigation, we made checks like $user->is_admin and $user->is_parent, to display the access links or not.

Checking the different roles using Eloquent Relationships, was easy, but it quickly started to add up on the per page number of queries.

How to check the number of queries run in a page?

We do this by first enabling the query log on the method that we are interested in:

The brief was to deliver a simple, clean, plain white website to showcase all her paintings and drawings and any upcoming exhibitions where people can see the work in first person.

A mobile responsive website was delivered and uploaded into the client’s existing website. Built with a wordpress backend, means that they will have full flexibility to update the content of any of the pages and even add new pages where needed.

“Thank you very much for my lovely new website. It looks great.”

– Kim Cody.

]]>The value of your workhttps://www.neeks.co.uk/2015/02/14/the-value-of-your-work/
Sat, 14 Feb 2015 21:27:03 +0000http://www.neeks.co.uk/?p=1482014 has been super busy, so busy that we haven’t even had time to keep the site up to date. We’ve just given it a little “refresh”, but still, we haven’t been able to spend on it as much time as we would have liked to.

One of our new year’s resolutions is to spend some time blogging. Not only about the awesome projects that we are working on but also about SEO, Content Marketing, why you shouldn’t use drag and drop website builders, etc.

Our first post this year is about pricing. Pricing digital work is very difficult, as there is no “physical” evidence of the work done, people don’t really get how much effort has gone into it.

So, should designers charge for the project or by the hour? or… should they ask the client first for their budget?

We always believe that a mixture of both is the best thing to do. The first, will set the bar for a high quality project. The second will be the client’s decision to compromise a bit of quality vs the cost.

Good designers/developers should be able to adapt to small budgets while keeping the quality above average. Although is very unlikely to have a very high quality website, very quickly, for little money. (the “Quality Triangle” problem – This is very well known in Project Management). It’s not impossible, but due to the high unlikeliness… If you do, then be very wary. Something that “looks” Ok/Good, may not have been coded “properly” or you may have just been given a template bought online, which means that your website just looks like many other out there. It could even look “too much” like a competitor’s website if the designer was not careful about it…

We’ve also been trying to read reading a book called “Logo design love 2”, which its amazing and you should totally buy.
There is a section that talks about charging money, the following story is used:

Legend has it that Pablo Picasso was sketching in the park when a bold woman approached him.

– “It’s you— Picasso, the great artist! Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist.”

So Picasso agreed to sketch her. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait.

He handed the women his work of art.

– “It’s perfect!” she gushed. “You managed to capture my essence with one stroke, in one moment. Thank you! How much do I owe you?”

– “Five thousand dollars,” the artist replied.

– “But, what?” the woman sputtered. “How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!”

To which Picasso responded,

-“Madame, it took me my entire life.”

Sometimes, designers need to be flexible and the price needs to be competitive, otherwise potential clients will go somewhere else. But other times is totally acceptable to charge accordingly to the designer’s awesomeness, just like Pablo Picasso.

Someone will always be able to do it cheaper if they really want the job and they don’t care about their own costs. But clients should always remember: “You get what you pay for”, and it’s totally against my morals to rush and do a shit job so that I can lower my price to match someone else’s quality and price.